Half-Life projects, Comic-Con program guide, Playstation Factory & Esports Mental Toughness

First, Dev-i-boy found a list of Valve games that never came out. These games were created in the dark times before Half Life: Alyx was announced, and include some interesting looks at what Half Life 3 could have been.

You can't go to Comic-Con this year, but you can watch it online. There's a great program with tons of shows including comics, television and gaming news. It's also probably the most accessible Comic-Con ever, since you don't need to leave your house and the shows are free.

First the robots came for the car factory jobs, and I said nothing. Then they came for the Playstation 4 assembly jobs, and I said "Cool, that's some nice tech". Sony has almost fully automated their assembly line and only use four people on the ends of a single assembly line that makes one console every 30 seconds. It's awesome.

Esports are stressful, and high skill players show the same signs of stress as their analogue counterparts. This doesn't surprise the Nerds at all, but it's an interesting study.

This week, Professor played a chaotic real time dice rolling game, DJ kept the peace in Agents of Mayhem and Dev-i-boy got distracted by job applications. Wish him luck.

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Indiana Jones, Robotic Delivery Boys & AMD Ryzen

WOW!!! We have an amazing episode for you this week, first up, thank you to our 1000 weekly listeners, you are amazing. At last, winter is here, and Professor and Buck are both totally enjoying it. DJ has brought us the controversy of the week, with wild claims of a new Indiana Jones, and the boys pile in on him. Once again we solve the world’s greatest issues with logic and careful consideration. We decide Chris Pratt is not suitable for taking on the role and also convince DJ that Indiana Jones is not a Marvel character yet; give Disney time and they will make it happen eventually I’m sure.

            With a fabulous Segway into the next topic we look at Digit. Not the figures, the robot that will help deliver your shopping from the car to your door. Professor decides he wants one to carry the shopping from the door to the kitchen and then cook his food. DJ calls robots slaves, revealing his desire to take over the world. Buck and Professor decide that given the way technology has been moving they wish to become Cyborgs and serve the robot overlords. We align the killer drones, self-replicating robots, driverless cars and robot dogs.

            Moving along before we get into too much trouble. We have a new CPU that is pushing the limits and is looks surprised at how amazing it is. AMD is back baby and challenging Intel once again. Buck and Professor fully geek out over what this means for building your own system. If you get confused and lost please let us know; we will get Professor to write up a translation for you. We also figure out how to turn your computer into an oven. We mean literally you will be able to cook your sausages and toast your marsh mellows.

            As always we make fun of everything, have a laugh with each other, at each other and life in general. We have the usual shout outs, remembrances, birthdays, and events of interest. As always, take care of yourselves, look out for each other, and stay hydrated. NERDS rule!!!

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Time Bandits, Fallout RPG & Artificial Intelligence

We wish to take a moment and offer our condolences and heart felt sympathies to all those injured and killed this week in Christchurch. Such senseless violence achieves nothing and is disgusting to us all. No words can express our sadness over this.

WOW! Once again those Nerds have done it again. They have found some exciting news about entertainment with a movie being adapted to a television series. That’s right, another awesome movie, Time Bandits this time, is going to get a reboot into a TV series. Hopefully it will be great and actually follow the story of the movie. We would say we are not holding our breath, but we would never consider it anyway, after all the examples of this sort of thing going wrong we just hope it doesn’t drag us all into the sucking void of despair. Then for those who like Fallout, who also like RPGs (not the rocket propelled grenade kind for the NSA and CIA who are listening and spying) we have news for you. Fallout is now a pen and paper role playing game, that’s right, and we warn, if you had no one to play fallout 76 with you will still be singing that song ‘Lonely’ again. Further there are miniatures available for table top games similar to Warhammer. Which let’s face it is really cool. We just haven’t figured out the loot boxes that Bethesda has got to be trying to squeeze into the game. Now we suggest everyone run for cover as Buck is back and on the Rant path with news that work is happening to insert AI memory processors to improve music ability. Now we understand this has to be a good thing right? Well, the thing he hates is the imbecilic nature of mumble rappers and the moronic fashion styles they represent. Trust me he really takes issue with that kind of thing. After we get him to calm down we look at the games played this week, followed by the famous events, birthdays, remembrances, and shout outs. The biggest shout out was a moments pause to remember the late great Stephen Hawking who left us last year.

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